The Chicago Transit Authority’s Clark/Lake station’s entrance is moving to another side of the Thompson Center — and Google is paying to build the redesigned, easier-to-find entrance to the heavily used transportation hub.
The station entrance within the Thompson Center on Lake Steet will move next year to the northeast corner of the building on Clark Street, according to the CTA. The Thompson Center is under construction to become Google’s new Chicago headquarters.
The CTA shared sleek conceptual renderings of proposed station makeover after the transit agency’s board voted Wednesday to amend its 1984 easement agreement with the building’s owner. Google purchased the building from the state for $105 million in 2022.
Bill Mooney, CTA’s chief infrastructure officer, said the changes to the station will be mostly cosmetic but also improve people’s ability to find the station.
“The current entrance … is kind of buried underneath our structure in the middle of Lake Street … and oftentimes, from a way finding standpoint, hard to see,” Mooney said at the meeting. “It gets lost in the clutter of that space.”
Moving the entrance to the corner of Clark and Lake puts it at a “very predominant point on the corner,” he said.
Renovation costs will be covered by Google’s subsidiary that runs the building, JRTC Holdings, according to the CTA. The new entrance should be completed by November 2025. When that’s done, the CTA plans its own $10 million improvement to the platform over Lake Street, to be finished in late 2026.
CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. told the board he was excited about the partnership with Google. He said the station announcement is the “baseline of what the improvements are going to be.” He said he hopes Google can “test out” other improvements “in the area of technology and connectivity.”
Google began demolishing the building’s exterior in May. The company said it is investing $280 million to remake the 17-story building. The company’s latest renderings show the building’s main concourse and lower level linked by open stairs, bleacher seating and overlooks.
Google has said it will keep the atrium open to the public, as it had been when the building was still owned by the state and featured a driver’s services facility in its basement.
The CTA’s Clark/Lake station is a major hub in the Loop, serving an average of 9,100 riders each weekday. Riders can get to both airports from the station, and it serves six of the agency’s eight rail lines.